SNEAKS 94 : Dressed to Kill . . . at the Box Office

It’s not just the fabric that’s making a stretch in this, the 1994 film lineup, whose highlights can almost be read as a series of bizarre fashion statements:

John Goodman tries on a toga. Drag-savvy Johnny Depp dons a dress. Julia Sweeney flies the ambisexual flannel. Robert Altman puts on a Paris runway show. Seemingly half the young actresses in Hollywood--starting with Sharon Stone--put on cowgirl hats. Meryl Streep puts on an American accent (and a life jacket). Jack Nicholson finally gets hair enhancement and then some. And Tom Cruise, newly tooth-augmented, sucks.

Let’s pray the movie year doesn’t.

All told, there’s every reason for hope. The year just past--besides being basically boffo at the box office--was the first in recent memory in which critics didn’t carp en masse that there weren’t enough good movies to fill out a Top 10 list. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Can the spillover effect possibly fail us? Aren’t we on a roll here, or will astrologers break the news that “Schindler’s List,” “Short Cuts” and “The Piano” were produced as the result of an unrepeatable planetary conjunction?

Never mind the usual depressing litany of sequels, remakes and pictures based on cartoons or skits. Forget Casper, Lassie, Black Beauty, Fred ‘n’ Wilma, Pat, Picard, the Saint, slickers, karate kids, ninja moppets and Mighty Ducks--for the moment, while you still can.

Disregard the fact that the lineup is full of unpromising-sounding Westerns, no doubt inspired by the thought that if a depressingly revisionist genre piece like “Unforgiven” could bring in the masses, a return to the classically hokey Western could really clean up. Block out the inordinate number of action thrillers pitting lawmen with tragic pasts against maniacal genius villains.

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Mind cleared? Good. Now visualize some of the low-concept films coming from strong, idiosyncratic and occasionally commercially viable directors; imagine a 1970s-style renaissance of the American auteur in which the knife of personal vision carves some niche space amid all the moviemaking by committee. As John Lennon said, it’s easy if you try:

* “Crooklyn” finds Spike Lee taking a gentler tack, reportedly, stepping away for the moment from direct focus on racial disharmony for a semi-autobiographical early-’70s period piece starring his sister Joie. (If it works, Lee will have proved to his critics his polemics aren’t his means of avoiding the personal.)

* “Natural Born Killers” has Oliver Stone--on the mend from the diminishing returns of his ‘Nam trilogy--recuperating outrageously with a violent, 100%-’merican black comedy about serial killers, based on a Quentin Tarantino script. (If it works, Stone will have proved to his critics he does have a sense of humor.)

* “Pret-a-Porter” promises Altman doing what Altman (almost always) does best: the deadpan satirical ensemble piece--this time set amid the world of high fashion, which the filmmaker professes to have quite a non-predatory affection for. (If it works, he’ll have proved nothing he didn’t 20 years ago.)

* “Ed Wood” is one of the big question marks of the year. As punctuation goes, it ended in a period for Columbia, which finally decided that it was worth ticking off Tim Burton not to green-light it (Disney is releasing it). Depp plays Wood, the cross-dressing director of some of the worst movies of the ‘50s, in this black-and-white biopic that, presumably, plays out as tragicomedy. (If it works . . . well, it’s hard to imagine it would, but we’re dying to see it just the same.)

* “The Hudsucker Proxy” marks the return of the Coen brothers, working in a Howard Hawksian vein with a period farce centered on industrialist Paul Newman and smart-mouthed newspaper reporter Jennifer Jason Leigh. (If it works, it could usher in a new era for the articulate screwball comedy, and erase the damage done by last year’s “Born Yesterday” remake.)

Other director-driven American films promising sub-blockbuster pleasures include Michael Tolkin’s “The New Age,” Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway” and Alan Rudolph’s “Mrs. Parker.”

From overseas, “The House of the Spirits” brings former Bergman collaborator Bille August back with a formidable cast that includes Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. Alan Parker directs man of the moment Anthony Hopkins in “The Road to Wellville,” based on T. Coraghessan Boyle’s acclaimed comic novel, such a long shot for filming you want to root for it in any instance.

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Say the auteurs fail us, though. There could still be enough fun to salvage the year just in some of the big-ticket projects with impressive pedigrees. Five picks for probable popular and possible critical success, from the high-concept and -budget lot:

* “The Lion King” is Disney’s newest animation blockbuster-in-waiting, with music again by Alan Menken. The studio has been using the opening musical number as a trailer all by itself, to great results, setting up the easy assumption that the following 80 minutes are as good.

* “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” has Robert De Niro as the misunderstood patchwork--plus articulation, sans bolts--with Kenneth Branagh playing God both as the monster’s maker and the movie’s director. (But no Emma, or Elsa.)

* “Wolf” aims to make Jack (“ Heeere’s Johnny”) Nicholson fearsome again, though with director Mike Nichols trying his hand at horror for the first time, the outcome is anything but predetermined. It could work: Will Nichols’ famous penchant for long, uninterrupted takes result in filmdom’s first five-minute werewolf transformation shot?

* “Interview With the Vampire” has Neil Jordan at the helm and Cruise at the crucifix-defying crux. No movie this year will have as much speculative naysaying to overcome, which will put “Vampire” in the enviable position of a mammothly expensive picture perceived as an underdog; come Thanksgiving, expect lots of folks saying they knew it would work all along.

* “True Lies” lives up to its oxymoronic title, for starters, by casting Arnold Schwarzenegger as a brilliant government spy. In anyone else’s hands you might think “ Really Last Action Hero,” but if “Terminator” creator James Cameron can’t restore Arnold’s good name and make sure that his astronomical budget actually shows up on the screen, no one can.

These are the curiosity-rousers. What’s anticipation without the possibility of failure? There are, to be sure, surer commercial bets.

Even with a clampdown on advance publicity, “The Flintstones” is well-known enough that by now probably everyone has imagined John Goodman yelling “Yabba-dabba-doo!,” so that the actual act might seem anticlimactic. It could hardly miss; if everyone who contributed to the script bought a ticket, it would make a fortune. Among the other two-dimensionalities made flesh on the way is Macaulay Culkin, playing against type--not--in “Richie Rich.” In the romantic comedy vein, Julia Roberts as a newspaper reporter sparring with Nick Nolte in “I Love Trouble” is perceived as the surest thing, though the track record of Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers doesn’t bespeak sophistication. The year’s other big newspaper-themed film, Ron Howard’s “The Paper,” looks to eschew the screwball, with Michael Keaton polishing up his dramatic side as a big-city editor under pressure.

An untitled Nora Ephron project, known around town as “The Night Before Xmas,” could well be the dramedy causing moviegoers to laugh through their hankies next winter; sanguine Steve Martin works through the holidays on a suicide hotline. And Robert Redford’s historically based “Quiz Show” sounds like the soul-searching stuff Oscar nods are made of.

Summer long shots most worth spotlighting amid the pre-sold properties include Robert Zemeckis’ big but risky “Forrest Gump,” a fantasy with Tom Hanks, and Meryl Streep waxing Willis-like in “The River Wild,” as an unlikely action heroine fighting back against baddies in the great outdoors.

The fate of “It’s Pat” may rest on the marketers’ ability to draw a combined male/female demographic--literally. But you can almost start tallying the receipts now on “Mighty Ducks II,” “Beverly Hills Cop III,” “City Slickers II,” the John Grisham-based “The Client,” the Harrison Ford/Tom Clancy reteaming “Clear and Present Danger,” Mel Gibson as “Maverick,” Kevin Costner as “Wyatt Earp” and Warren Beatty’s “Love Affair,” a remake of “An Affair to Remember.”

As these glide into their foreordained grosser spots, we’d just as soon keep our eyes on the possible train wrecks--such as James Brooks’ now non-musical “I’ll Do Anything,” which, word has it, is much improved without a song in its heart; the Baldwin/Basinger starrer “The Getaway,” which is being touted from the inside as campy fun, never a good sign for a movie with such a straight-faced trailer; and Gus Van Sant’s “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,” which sounds like the sprawlingest all-star counterculture mess since Dennis Hopper got a studio allowance to make “The Last Movie” a quarter-century ago.

Listings; David Pecchia: Photo Research; Sue Martin